Performance reviews

What the Reviews tab is

Reviews is where a structured read on a person lives: a manager's quarterly 1-on-1, a sub-relationship review, or any assessment you want captured in a consistent format instead of a memory or a Slack message. It captures rated dimensions, two written examples each of what someone is doing well and where they need to grow, a forward-looking commitment, and a signed sign-off, then turns the finished form into a branded PDF you can hand to the person or file for the record.

Reviews is one of three tabs inside Forms, alongside Surveys (external recipients answer a link) and Audits (an operator walks a closed claim or a job the way a carrier auditor would). Reviews shares the same underlying form engine as Audits: both are self-run, both score against a target, both end in a signature. What's different is the vocabulary and the shape of the questions, five rating dimensions and open-text narrative instead of a compliance checklist.

Verinode does not run the review or judge the person. You answer every question yourself, based on what you've observed. The form is the structure; you bring the read.

Where to find it

Two doors lead to the same place:

• Forms in the sidebar, at /forms. Across the top of the page sits a row of three pills: Surveys, Audits, Reviews. Click Reviews.
• Team → Performance Reviews, a launch tile on the Team page. This opens the same flow as a self-contained overlay (three tabs: Overview, In progress, Start a review) without leaving Team.

Starting a review from the Team tile keeps you inside that overlay's Start a review tab. Starting it from Forms → Reviews opens the same completion form as a slide-over on top of the page, so you never lose the page you were on. Either way you land on the same run form and the finished review shows up in both places.

The Reviews tab on /forms

Everything below appears once you click the Reviews pill. The header button switches to + Add Review, and every metric on the page recalculates to only your review records (a self_audit-mode survey tagged with the 1-on-1 Performance Review template).

The hero

Before you've run a review, the top of the page reads as an empty-state card: the eyebrow "Reviews · Capture A Structured Read On Your People", the headline "Conduct your first review.", and this body copy:

A review captures a structured read on a team member, sub, or relationship: ratings on the dimensions that matter, two examples each of strengths and gaps, a forward-looking commitment, and a signed sign-off. Use it for quarterly 1-on-1s or any structured assessment of a person.

A Conduct your first review button sits below it. If you have a review sitting in progress but nothing completed, the headline changes to "Pick up a review you've started." and the button reads Open the review picker.

Once at least one review exists, the hero switches to its filled state: a large percentage with the label average underneath it, the number is the average score across every completed review, using the same rating math the run form scores against (below). Beside it a status pill reads Strong (60% or higher), Building (30 to 59%), or Low (under 30%), colored accordingly. A line underneath reads how many reviews are open and how many responses have come in so far. Two secondary tiles sit to the right: Active reviews (count, "in progress" or "none open") and Reviews completed (count, "across every review" or "none completed yet").

The Explore row

Four metric tiles, each one clicking through to a filtered list:

• Active: reviews currently in progress or drafted. Sub-label reads Run Your First Review when empty, otherwise the completion percentage tagged Avg Rating.
• Reviews: the count of individual review records. Sub-label reads No Reviews Yet when empty; once you have data it shows the average rating and how recently the latest one landed.
• Templates: the number of review templates in the catalog, sub-labeled Pre-Built Review Templates. Today that catalog holds one template, the 1-on-1 Performance Review (see below); more are planned.
• Closed: completed, signed-off reviews. Sub-label reads Completed Reviews Land Here when empty, otherwise Historical Reviews.

Upcoming and Most recent

Below Explore, an Upcoming · next 30 days row lists any review you've set to repeat on a schedule. With nothing scheduled it reads:

No surveys scheduled to repeat. Toggle "Run on a schedule" when you build a survey to see quarterly tool checks, monthly vendor pulses, and annual reviews land here automatically.

A Most recent row lists your last several review records as tiles. Each tile shows the review's title, its status (in progress, closed) and how long ago it was sent or closed. With none run yet, the row reads:

Recently asked surveys appear here as you send them. Use a template from the Templates tile or click "+ Add Survey" to ask your first question.

The review template: 1-on-1 Performance Review

Click + Add Review (or the hero's CTA) and a picker opens: Run a review, with the line "Pick a review template. Use it for quarterly 1-on-1s with the team, sub-relationship reviews, or any structured assessment of a person or partnership." Below it, one row per available template, each showing its name, an estimated completion time, and a short description. Today there is exactly one:

1-on-1 Performance Review: estimated 15 min. "Quarterly review of a team member. Five rating dimensions, structured strengths/gaps, signed sign-off, ready to share."

Selecting it and clicking Start review (or, from the Team tile's Start a review tab, Start the review) materializes the run form with these five sections:

1. Subject + period: three short text fields: the team member being reviewed, the review period (e.g. "Q1 2026"), and their role.
2. Performance ratings: five 1-to-5 ratings, each with its own help text:

- Quality of work: "Rare rework, attention to detail, finished product." - Reliability and ownership: "Follow-through, hits commitments, raises blockers early." - Communication: "Clear updates, listens, escalates the right items." - Customer / carrier experience: "Ratings, complaints, walkthrough sign-offs." - Team contribution: "Helps peers, mentors juniors, raises the room."

1. Strengths and gaps: two open-text prompts, each asking for two specific examples: what they're doing well, and where they need to grow. A third prompt asks for the coaching commitment for the next period, with the help text "What you'll do to help them, not what they'll do." This section is deliberately about your commitment, not a list of their to-dos.
2. Forward look: two multi-choice questions ("Discuss compensation in this period?" with Yes / Not yet / Already done; "On track for next role / certification?" with Yes / Not yet / Off track) and one optional open text: "One thing they want from you (their words)."
3. Sign-off: a signature field labeled Manager.

Every question in the form is required except one: the "One thing they want from you (their words)" prompt in Forward look is the only optional field.

Starting and running a review

1. 1From Forms → Reviews, click + Add Review (or from Team, click the Performance Reviews tile, then its Start a review tab).
2. 2Pick a template from the list (currently just the one) and confirm the highlighted radio dot lands on it.
3. 3Click Start review (Forms picker) or Start the review (Team tile panel). This creates the review record immediately and opens the completion form.
4. 4Work through each section top to bottom. Every question shows its position number, its required asterisk if it applies, and its help text where one exists.
5. 5Rate each performance dimension on the 1-to-5 scale (labeled 1 = Poor · 5 = Excellent beneath the buttons), write the two strengths, the two gaps, and your coaching commitment, answer the two forward-look questions, then type your full name in the Manager signature field at the bottom.
6. 6Click Submit audit (yes, that's the literal label on the button, shared with the Audits form) once every required field is filled and you've signed.

While you're working, the form auto-saves your answers as a draft every ten seconds if anything changed since the last save, and a small Saved [time] stamp appears next to the progress bar so you know it landed. A progress bar at the bottom of the screen tracks N of 18 answered as you go (18 is the question count on the 1-on-1 template, across its 5 sections). If you try to submit before every required question has an answer, the button is blocked and an error reads "Answer required for N questions before submitting." If every question is answered but you haven't signed, it reads "Sign the form before submitting."

Scoring: how the percentage is calculated

The 1-on-1 template scores by averaging your five 1-to-5 ratings and converting that average to a percentage of the 5-point scale. An average of 4.2 out of 5 becomes 84%. The template's target is 70%, which corresponds to an average rating of 3.5 out of 5 across the five dimensions. Anything at or above the target reads Passed; anything below reads Below target. This scoring rule (score type "rating average" against a percentage target) is what powers the average shown in the tab's hero panel too, it's the mean of every completed review's score.

Strengths, gaps, the coaching commitment, and the forward-look answers are not part of the score. They're the narrative record that goes with it.

After you submit: the summary and the PDF

Once submitted, the review closes and reopening it (from the Reviews tab, the Team tile's "In progress" list before it closes, or a direct link) shows a read-only summary instead of the form:

• A header reads "Audit complete" (the same generic label the Audits form uses; reviews and audits share this completion shell) with your score as a large percentage, the target percentage beside it, and Passed or Below target in color.
• The exact date and time you closed it, upper right.
• An Export PDF button, with the caption "Branded with your company name and signature." The PDF carries your company name and the typed signature from the sign-off field.
• Every section and every question you answered, laid out the same way the form did, with your actual answer underneath each one, formatted for reading: a rating shows as "4 / 5", a forward-look answer shows the option you picked, and the signature line shows the signed name and the exact date it was signed, prefixed with the role label ("Manager: Jordan Ellis · Jul 13, 2026, 2:14 PM").

There is no edit path once a review is closed. If circumstances change, run a fresh review for the next period.

Empty states, verbatim

• No templates loaded (rare, network hiccup on the picker): "Review templates ship with the product. None are cataloged right now."
• Nothing scheduled to repeat: "No surveys scheduled to repeat. Toggle 'Run on a schedule' when you build a survey to see quarterly tool checks, monthly vendor pulses, and annual reviews land here automatically."
• No reviews run yet, Most recent row: "Recently asked surveys appear here as you send them. Use a template from the Templates tile or click '+ Add Survey' to ask your first question."
• Team tile Overview, before any review: the tile's empty state lists two lines under "Your reviews once you start": "Reviews in progress, ready to resume" and "Completed reviews with their PDFs."

Best-practice example

Run the 1-on-1 quarterly, on the same cadence for everyone on the team, not just when something's gone wrong. Answer the ratings first while your specific examples are fresh, then write the two strengths and two gaps with the same specificity the form asks for, "handled the Riverside claim's supplement dispute without escalating" reads very differently a quarter later than "good communicator." Use the coaching-commitment field as your own accountability line, not theirs: what you will do differently to help them close the gap. Sign it, export the PDF, and hand it over in the conversation itself rather than after. A pattern of "Below target" scores on the same dimension across several people is worth a conversation with yourself about training or hiring, not just with the individual.

Data sources

Related

• Audits
• Surveys